Humorist Julia Gorin has a prominent editorial on the Wall Street Journal website today about the Libertarian Party. She seems to have rather a strangelove for my Libertarian Party. READ IT HERE
She seems to be intending to ridicule Libertarians as loser nutbars that don't care about anybody but themselves. (I hasten to note, however, that she did more or less fairly represent the basic beliefs of the party.) The rants in the piece seemed so much to emphasize the typically leftist selfish charge that I was a bit surprised to figure from the credits that she's affiliated with a conservative website (Jewish Review) and a site for right-wing comics. (Scary!)
Yet, somehow by the end, "Even if this party never puts a candidate into the Oval Office, its ultimate purpose may be to help the two opposing major parties view each other through more sober lenses, and thus help the country arrive at a happy, if gay, marriage."
Ah, so the losertarians end up emerging as the beacon point of compromise for the whole system. Shine on, you crazy diamonds.
Article comments
1 - RJ
I believe the LP would do a lot better at the ballot box if they would just drop some of the dogma that makes them unelectable.
Like, a logical case could be made for legal (and regulated) heroin/coke/meth sold in stores (and taxed) to anyone 18 and up. But that doesn't translate into a stump speech that will really bring in a lot of new voters.
Of course, if the LP dropped the dogma, they would simply become quasi-Republicans in a lot of ways, mooting their entire existence.
It's kind of a Catch-22...
2 - biff cappuccino
I'd guess that one main reason libertarianism will always fail at the ballot box is because most people are sentimental and prefer to feel than to think. It's not that people are born dumb, but that public education does an excellent job of conditioning people to believe that learning is boring and intimidating, while thinking for yourself is dangerous and not worth the risk.
And libertarianism requires people to be self-confident, skeptical, and free of the exciting paranoid delusions that the Chomsky left and the fundamentalist right entertain. Both see the world in the grip of a multitude of corporate/evil forces and both place moralizing and putting their noses into other people's business at the top of their agenda.
Libertarianism also requires a lot of life experience before it can be taken seriously. Experience teaches us that most of the media bugaboos are imaginary and that people can take care of themselves, that foreigners aren't infantile, that life is basically pretty good, and that the only way to achieve financial freedom is to work for it yourself.
As long as politicians promise more than they can realistically provide once they get into office (which is the only way to get into office) gullible voters (which is most of the electorate - myself included) will believe the government ought to provide it. Anyway, I'm sure you know all of this and more. Just my fifty cents worth.
3 - Geo
Read Dope Inc., if you can get a copy. Think about the prohabition debacle and the rise in organized crime as a result. I think the drug policy of the LP has more to do with downsizing crime, than addicting constituants. Besides, if someone is robbing a bank for dope money, under a LP form of government, everyone in the bank could pull out their concealed weapons and blast away at the drug crazed robbers, sound terrible... it's called deterrent. Maybe robbers would think twice about comitting crime, if everyone was armed.
It's a wierd philosophy, but it makes perfect sense. Here we are restricting everyone and everything through law, yet we are experiencing total lawlessness. The criminals are better armed than the police forces, who are terrible understaffed, and we don't have any money to pay for increased in protection. The cops are under NO legal obligation to respond to 911 calls (litigation issues), so that argument doesn't pass the acid test. What to do? Legalize everything... and the crime will go away. There may be an adjustment period... but soon criminals would get the message. Don't mess with a law abiding citizen, becuase they are protecting their rights, becuase they can.
Chaos? Garbage Can model? No, just a natural progression of balance in society.
What do we have to lose. Society is a mess with the way it's being "handled" currently.
In a way it resembles differing Economic Models, yet we know (for a fact) that less governmental control brings freer less restrictive markets and greater profitability. There is a sifting or adjustment period, but only the strong survive. Face it, the industrial revolution is over, slave labor is over, corporate culture is as aware as the employees (individuals) working there. Organizational behaviour exists because people work in organizations and people have behaviours and norms - hence so do organizations. It transcends all boundries. Including government and society. Government is MORE restrictive than any company has EVER been. So why not trim down the government, cut through the law books. Release the citizens from the strangle hold of government restrictions on one hand and lawlessness' sway, on the other hand. The good old American citizen is being crushed by two oppossing cultures, each one feeding upon the other. It sucks... and that's what the LP is all about... restoring the PH balance back into our lives. We have to take some responsibility... because under the LP the government is NOT a nanny state. We have to get beyond what the government has become. It's time, or just about time. They'll be a straw that breaks the camels back, it's only a matter of time. The media, dems and Republicans and the sheeple be damned.
4 - Margaret Romao Toigo
Many many Democrats and Republicans are really Libertarians -- they just don't know it yet.